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Of Monsters and Men…and Decor

I thought it’d be fun to take a trip down memory lane and do an update on one of the posts that Aunt Peaches featured on my decor about a year ago. It also ties in with the story of my boyfriend Bruce – so bear with me on this super-sized post.

After over a year of wear and tear, both “wallpapers” have held up better than I’d ever imagined. The living room Rex Libris wall could use some replacement panels. With Bruce having his studio along that wall, the paper tends to get bumped with his office chair. There’s also a lot of paper curling along the baseboard since we went through a Nebraska summer where bug spray is obligatory: brown recluse spiders – need I say more?

The bathroom JTHM and Squee paper still amazes me – I was prepared for the humidity of it being the bath/laundry room to absolutely destroy the unprotected paper. But lo and behold! There’s only a tiny bit of wrinkling on one of the papers (the black panel that says ZOOM), and the top panels could use readjusting/more tape. I went minimalist with the tape on the top row since I didn’t want the tape loops to show, and I’ve been too lazy to fix it. There’s only a tiny bit of paper curling. And yes eagle-eyed readers, some of my Pop Vinyl figures have changed. The Wonder Woman and Batgirl are now with the rest of the DC and Marvel figures on our comic book shelves near the kitchen.

So that’s it for the quasi-technical stuff – now onto the fun stuff! Back in my pre-Bruce days I had moved into a new apartment and the site Apartment Therapy was my decorating bible. I was also getting anal about the look of my place – I was buying a lot of my own furniture for the first time and I wanted it all to look sharp and cool like “Apartment Therapy apartments.” I was on my way to having a beautiful, if a bit soulless, apartment when Apartment Therapy posted a House Tour of Aunt Peaches’ (old) place. It was like the heavens opened up and rained-down some perspective on my little head: I am irreverent and my apartment was NOT reflecting that aspect of myself in any way, shape, or form. From that point on I had a blast decorating my place – but my pride and joy were the comic walls (and my vinyl figure collection).

However, after doing some “Muppet upholstering” I paused to look around and I thought, “As a single woman I’m never going to find a guy who won’t take one look at my place and run screaming.” So, I decided that if there wasn’t an intelligent guy out there who didn’t enjoy watching cartoons, being a dork, etc. as much as I did, then I was fine being single.

A few months later a friend convinced me to try Twitter after I had left Facebook. I gave it a go and my 30th follower was some guy named Bruce (I was his 300th follower). We had fun getting to know each other online, and it wasn’t long before he, a friend of his (Tracie), and I decided to meet up since we lived less than a half hour away from each other. We all met up to go to a comic shop together and we had an instant kinship. The next morning I asked him out on a date (if he was interested). Turns out he was indeedy-doodle interested!

Three days later we had our first date and he got to see my apartment for the first time. Did I mention he’s a comic artist? Yeah. This is his web comic (I’m linking to one of my favorite ones, but be forewarned that many of the strips are NSFW). His jaw dropped at my comic walls (bonus: he didn’t run away). He even tweeted a picture of my bathroom wall. Needless to say we fell deeply in love and he has since moved in (his stuff complimented mine perfectly) and we now share the most adorkable apartment ever.

So, for my fellow intelligent/irreverent ladies out there: there is hope that there’s someone out there who is as witty and silly as you are. Truly, if a guy looks at your decor and runs away, then that’s his problem and not yours. Please don’t be afraid to be yourself and hide your zaniness! Oh look: I’m on a soapbox! Where did that come from?! I think y’all are pickin’ up what I’m layin’ down. ::steps down from soapbox::

On a fun/silly aside: the other sickeningly sweet thing about the two of us is that we have a Godzilla comic connection. Back when I was in the 5th grade, I made my own comics that my homeroom teacher would kindly post on one of the bulletin boards in the classroom. It was called Duckie and it followed the exploits of a toy duck who is purchased by a yuppie family (here ya go, people not alive or too young in the 1980’s: yuppie definition). Duckie (or “Duckiekins” as he’s called by the snobby little girl who owns him) is so enraged at their shallowness that he goes into evil rampages whenever humans aren’t around. Typically he’d beat up the other toys in the girl’s collection. The Godzilla strip had a twist on this general pattern:

Later on in the life of the strip Duckie became very involved in raging against school-related injustices. Needless to say, most of those comics weren’t posted in school.

Cut to this weekend, where I attended I-Con with him and we created our first collaborative art piece (I pencilled and he inked):

I’m seriously just noticing how much my 5th grade comic handwriting matches my handwriting of today. Yowsa! But I love this piece so much that yes, it’s getting framed and will be proudly hung in our home.

So there you have it: a little decor, a little personal stuff, and a little silly stuff. Basically that sums up my hope for this blog pretty dang well.

Next time, on a very special episode of Hafuboti (Five gold stars to anyone who got my reference to Clone High. Six gold stars to anyone who knows what Clone High is): Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Kermthulhu Mup’lyeh wgah’fragl fhtagn!